Evolving paradigms of parallel transport mechanisms are necessary to satisfy the ever increasing need of high performing communication systems. Parallel transport mechanisms can be described as a technique to send several data simultaneously using several parallel channels. The authors’ survey captures the entire building blocks in designing next generation parallel transport mechanisms by firstly analyzing the basic structure of a transport mechanism using a point to point scenario. They then proceed to segment parallel transport into four categories and describe some of the most sophisticated technologies such as Multipath under Point to Point, Multicast under Point to Multipoint, Parallel downloading under Multipoint to Point, and Peer to Peer streaming under Multipoint to Multipoint. The Survey enables the authors to stipulate that high performing parallel transport mechanisms can be achieved by integrating the most efficient technologies under these categories, while using the most efficient underlying Point to Point transport protocols.